House Committee Passes Bill for ByteDance to Part With TikTok

The U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce unanimously voted to advance a bill which would require TikTok to part ways with its owner ByteDance, or face a ban in the United States, Reuters reports. The bill was introduced in the U.S. earlier this week by China committee chair Rep. Mike Gallagher, and Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, who said that because ByteDance must comply with the Chinese Communist Party, it represents a risk to American users’ data. The proposed legislation would give ByteDance an ultimatum of 165 days to divest from TikTok, or else it will become illegal for app store operators to sell the app. “It is not a ban, think of this as a surgery designed to remove the tumor and thereby save the patient in the process,” he said. A spokesperson for TikTok disagreed. “This bill is an outright ban of TikTok, no matter how much the authors try to disguise it,” they said. “This legislation will trample the First Amendment rights of 170 million Americans and deprive 5 million small businesses of a platform they rely on to grow and create jobs.” On Thursday, hundreds of calls from constituents flooded Congressional phone lines, as TikTok directed users to call their representatives to urge them to stop the bill from passing.